Ideal Government: Part 2 Education - By Jim Johnson

You may wonder why I put education so early in this series. I value education highly. Just a generation of propaganda can destroy a nation. We saw this with the rise of fascism prior to World War 2, and within the Communist Block. The ability to standardize the training of all the citizens is a tremendously powerful tool delegated to government, a more powerful tool than one can morally wield.
 
My wife and I home school our younger kids. Up until last year, we home schooled them all. While I understand the pressure it puts on a family to train children in mathematics and literature, I would certainly recommend it to any family that can afford to. However, not all families are ideal settings like the Walton's. Many families have single parents, or both parents have to work to support their needs. Moreover, there are people who do not have the self-discipline or capability to be responsible for the education of their children. As the education of a child affects society, there is a vested interest in education.

My older children are educated at a charter school, which seems to teach them well. One thing we have noticed, is the rigid standardization that they all have. There are various tests coming from the state and federal level which all publicly funded children take in order to determine funding in the future.

Herein lies the problem, these tests are so rigid in what is being taught that it creates an atmosphere in which propaganda is easily propagated. "Science" classes become politicized. Even as a hypothesis, the concept of man made global warming is taught as gospel truth. Required reading in literature classes such as "The Scarlet Letter" denigrate religion, "Lord of the Flies" cast doubt on self-governance, and poets like EE Cummings who project poems like distorted modern art are cerebrated while others like Walt Whitman are ignored. That would be fine on a small scale, but doing it nationwide, nobody gets another perspective. Latin disappears from anyone's knowledge. Creating a society wherein everybody knows the same thing simultaneously creates a society where nobody knows another thing. The knowledge of the founding of the United States is quickly depleting, now the masses think what they have taught, that they were just a bunch of power hungry "rich white men".

This standardization of education needs to stop, otherwise in a few generations, we will be ripe for destruction, just as Nazi Germany or the Francoist dictatorship in Spain. We need to preserve the diversity in thought. I find it ironic how liberals tout diversity in race, diversity in lifestyle, diversity in ethnicity, but when it comes to diversity in thought (what actually benefits society), they shut down. Public education, secondary education, mainstream media (all three supported through government funding and kickbacks) is all ran by socialist ideology.

Some goals of the communists as read into the Congressional Record 1963:

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. 

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

We need to reverse this trend and allow for the free flow of ideas once again. In order to do this, we need to abolish the Department of Education, and all federal funding going to schools. I do not see anywhere in the constitution that specifies that education should be funded, but I do read the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

Leave final control of education in the hands of the several states (preferably at the county and local level, but wealth discrepancies may make this difficult). Testing may be fine, but more for advertisement purposes of the individual schools. If a certain school decides Latin is a worthwhile pursuit, having standard tests that decide funding will prohibit that.

Conclusion

Government should exist to maximize the freedom of the individual. Living in a tyrannical dictatorship would not be the most pleasant thing, but neither would living in a "Road Warrior" style of society where anarchy is rampant. Education is just one facet of this same idea that I may expand upon in the future in some other venue. Let the individuals govern themselves as much as possible.